Net Work
Alan Winstanley
This month, Net Work looks at the latest updates to Amazon Fire, GoogleTV/Chromecast and
Devolo’s Wi-Fi extender; plus the charging trials of being an EV early adopter.
C
onsumer demand for Internet-
based services is soaring in Britain,
and the race is on, somewhat
belatedly compared with some other
countries, to deliver fibre-based Internet
comms directly to the home (FTTH).
Even in the author’s rural location,
village roads are being dug up by fibre
providers eager to ‘pipe’ high-speed
data directly into our homes and offices.
About 20 years earlier, Diamond Cable
(later, NTL then Virgin Media) was
rolling out cable TV for the first time
and coax cable was ducted underneath
the same pavements in the expectation
of delivering cable TV to towns and
villages in the future. Virgin Media
would offer a hybrid fibre coax (HFC)
network followed by its £3bn Project
Lightning superfast fibre network, but
for funding and technical reasons much
of the original cable network was never
switched on locally: the cable simply
ran straight through towns, but the
scale of civil works made it non-viable
to connect every home in every street
to cable TV, and coax cable would
be no substitute for FTTH services
anyway. Those legacy ‘CATV’ access
covers, which perforate thousands
of miles of pavements, bear witness
to an early endeavour, but thanks
to a new crop of service providers
homeowners are finally reaping the
benefits of superfast fibre broadband
fed directly into their property.
As predicted some years ago, British
Telecom (BT) has now moved its phone
line subscribers to flat-rate quarterly tariffs that bundle, say, 500 or 700 ‘free’
minutes. Thanks to cellphones,
increasing numbers of households
don’t use a landline at all anymore.
Eventually, as networks are switched
over to optical fibre to carry voice
calls and streaming media, many
local telephone exchanges will
become redundant, along with their
copper-wire networks.
Content is king
In the early 2000s I attended a
trade event where BT was the
guest speaker, and BT implored
web designers like us to exploit
the then-new ADSL services by
adding more bandwidth-intensive
media than had previously been
feasible with dial-up. The theory
was, that by tantalising web users
with more immersive content, this
would stimulate the demand for
ADSL. As FTTC and FTTH servic- Amazon’s Fire TV Stick HD dongle in situ, fitted
es continue to expand, connectivity with an HDMI extension. The 5V power cord
is becoming a commodity and con- hangs separately: you could try powering it
tent is still king. Major telcos and from a spare TV USB port.
entertainment providers such as BT
Sport, Netflix and Amazon are falling number of platforms are all jostling to
over themselves to feed our insatiable lock you into their services. Google’s
appetites for more streaming media. Net- new Chromecast (plus remote control)
flix was recently roundly criticised over with Google TV (see last month) has been
soft-launched and, at the time of writing,
its series The Crown, which depicts life
in the Royal Family. The controversial is stubbornly stuck at £59.99 online. It
series has drawn fire in Britain from royal could be a good choice for Android users.
During last November’s Black Friday, I
friends, commentators and politicians
who worry that non-discerning viewers spotted that rival Amazon had dropped
might actually believe that the heavily the price of their new-generation Fire
dramatised and fictional programme is TV Stick devices to £24.99 (usually
really true! Netflix rejected calls to in- £39.99), making them a viable way of
clude a disclaimer in the opening titles. upgrading a couple of TVs. Included
with the HDMI dongles are a remote
Fire-powered TV
control with microphone that interacts
Amazon continues to add more with Amazon’s Alexa at the push of a
streaming content as part of its Prime button (no eavesdropping here!). Note
package, including a vast array of
the cheapest Amazon ‘Lite’ Fire TV (normovies (some free, some paid-for), mally £29.99) omits the Alexa and TV
specially commissioned series, catch- power/volume buttons, while the costup TV and millions of songs for free, lier 4K UHD type is £49.99.
coupled with unlimited cloud-based
Setting up an Amazon Fire TV Stick
photo storage and, of course, they on an HD TV was impressively simple.
bundle in free next-day deliveries Amazon warns that only the supplied
on most product lines.
mains adaptor (5.25V 1.0A) mains adapIt’s easier than ever to access stream- tor should be used, but as it’s a USB
ing video on an ordinary ‘non smart’ type I tried a spare USB port on the TV
Virgin Media Project Lightning engineers lay
TV with a spare HDMI port, and a itself (well you would, wouldn’t you). In
fibre optic cable (Image: Virgin Media)
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Practical Electronics | February | 2021
any case, the Fire TV dongle checks the
power supply during setup and warns if
insufficient current is available. Regardless, the setup allowed me to continue
using my TV’s USB port anyway – this
idea worked with one TV but not the
other. A sure sign of power problems is
when the Fire TV dongle keeps rebooting, which the official adaptor would
cure, but I also tried a powerbank instead
with success. A short HDMI extension
is also provided if HDMI ports are inaccessible on the TV chassis (see photo).
Once powered up, after entering Wi-Fi
and Amazon logins the Fire TV updated
its firmware and it was easy enough to
install popular streaming TV apps. Users
of Amazon Photos can also set up a TV
screensaver that rotates their favourite
shots with various blend effects.
Generally, there was nothing at all to
dislike about Amazon’s Fire TV Stick:
setup was smooth and flawless and,
of course, it picked up watchlists and
Amazon movies that had been ‘paused’
on other devices. This model’s remote
control also includes infra-red control
that learns the TV’s power and volume
codes (which worked perfectly on both
TVs). Plus, Alexa can now broadcast via
the TV, although I found it hard to discern
its voice on a flat screen’s tinny speakers.
Overall, Amazon has got it right and
the Fire TV upgrade will add a new lease
of life to any TV with a spare HDMI port.
A cheaper choice for Android fans might
be a classic Chromecast, controlled via
apps, or if you want to ‘mirror’ your
tablet or phone onto a TV screen then
a multitude of screen-player dongles
is available (search online for Miracast
display dongle or similar).
Candid camera
In recent columns I suggested some ideas
for IP security cameras, most of which require a dedicated app from Google Play or
the App Store to view footage or manage
the camera’s setup. They may offer (paidfor) cloud storage too, and hopefully the
apps will be updated by their designers
when Android or iOS (or Windows) get
future upgrades. The HeimVision HM311
3MP Outdoor Security Camera (see Net
Work, December 2020) was spotted at
under £25 during Black Friday, which
would make it a bargain. A dedicated UCam 247 HD Wi-Fi bullet camera
has lasted for five years on the author’s
network and is accessed via an app or
web browser, but with a total of three of
my TVs now sporting Amazon Fire TV
dongles, could I check the camera on a
TV screen as well? One idea was to try
Onvifer, which claims to be the world’s
first Android app supporting IP cameras
compatible with ONVIF (originally, the
Open Network Video Interface Forum)
Practical Electronics | February | 2021
standards. Although the Wi-Fi camera
made no claims about ONFIV-compatibility, happily the Onvifer app did
connect to it and streamed the video on
an older 7-inch tablet. (Separately, as a
sign of the times, the UK importers of
this good quality IP camera tell me that
it is now unavailable due to production
problems and sadly it’s not clear if they
can offer bullet cameras again.)
As it turns out, Onvifer is also available
in Amazon’s app store (ASIN B007OW2WZI) for direct download onto Fire
Sticks, so a demo version was soon up
and running on a Fire-powered TV.
Again, it’s potluck whether a camera is
compatible, but it worked in the author’s
case though the app’s choice of image
resolution had to be downsized (the
available image resolution is set in the
camera app). Also, do select ‘Transport
by TCP’ instead of the default HTML.
The app also offers multi-screen viewing and other options. The paid-for Pro
version of Onvifer costs just £3.79 per
platform, so Fire Stick and Android
phone users will need to buy it twice.
Devolo’s new Wi-Fi Repeater
When Wi-Fi coverage is a problem around
the home and it’s not feasible to run Ethernet cable everywhere, one workaround is
to use powerline communications (PLC)
to transmit data through the ring mains.
This can be very convenient, especially
if the mains wiring is of decent quality
and not electrically ‘noisy’: Devolo PLC
network products have been covered in
the past and they claim a range of 500m
for their ‘Magic’ adaptors. Other brands,
including TP-Link and Netgear, also
offer PLC ranges. Devolo recently sent
PE their new Wi-Fi Repeater+ ac to try.
(NB this model 8703 is not a PLC adaptor as it doesn’t carry mains-borne data:
it’s to extend Wi-Fi coverage instead.)
Devolo says its new 802.11ac repeater
offers a wireless LAN with a maximum
data rate of 1200 Mbps and crossband
repeating for faster performance, utilising both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency
bands. Built-in beamforming through
four antennae targets terminal devices
for better data transmission, and wireless
Mesh operation provides seamless networking around the property [ie, whole
home coverage, when used with other
suitable Devolo Magic wireless adaptors]. Apart from Wi-Fi, there are two
10/100 Ethernet ports to connect static
equipment. The model supplied is larger
than many plug-in repeaters, but it has
a pass-through mains socket, and it’s
worth noting that Devolo configures it
for British households where mains outlets are frequently at floor level. Hence
the UK mains plug is near the bottom of
the ventilated housing and the Ethernet
ports sprout from the top. I noticed that
the continental versions with Schuko
sockets are the other way round.
When installed in default ‘repeater’
mode it will join and extend an existing wireless network, or it can be set as
a wireless access point instead, which
needs an Ethernet cable to hook to the
router. As readers doubtless know, devices like these often take either five
minutes or five hours to install and
the printed setup guide appeared very
simple. The repeater can be installed
using Devolo’s Home App on, for example, a smartphone. Simply plug into the
mains and change the phone’s network
SSID to the one broadcast by the Wi-Fi
repeater. After a minute, a list of available Wi-Fi networks appears – choose
which one to extend (in my case, either
my router’s Wi-Fi, or my PLC-based wireless network), type in the password and
eventually the Home and Wi-Fi LEDs will
indicate success. The setup initially performed flawlessly and after a couple of
minutes the repeater rewarded me with
two solid white LEDs. Push-button or
PIN number WPS setup is also offered,
something I never find successful and I
could not make it work this time either,
perhaps due to my router.
As a test I could connect tablets, phones
and the two Amazon Firestick TV dongles
mentioned earlier, and everything worked
very well indoors. My enthusiasm was
Devolo’s Wi-Fi ac Repeater+ has a passthrough mains socket and extends existing
wireless networks by up to 1200Mbps.
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dimmed, though, as next day I found
the repeater had disconnected and was
stubbornly blazing a red LED for ‘pairing mode’. There followed the usual
frustrations of downloading manuals,
FAQs, reboots and factory resets. After
some perseverance the repeater was finally up and running again. A white/
red blinking LED indicated a sub-optimal connection to a distant router, but it
has operated reliably ever since.
Configuration can be accessed more
easily using Devolo’s Cockpit software,
which worked well on a W10 PC: a new
‘Next network’ button in the software
threw me initially before the new repeater made an appearance on screen.
Compared with some arcane setups
found with other repeaters, this one is
very good indeed.
If you already have a Devolo Magic
Wi-Fi system, or any other wireless
network that you wish to extend, then
the new Devolo Wi-Fi Repeater+ ac is
a simple and elegant extender solution
with built-in features that improve coverage and reliability. Some might use it as
the first stage of gradually upgrading to
a Devolo Magic Mesh whole-home network. The repeater is listed by CPC (order
code CS33940, £57.90 inc VAT). More
details are at: https://bit.ly/pe-feb21-dev
and the useful ‘missing manual’ is available from: https://tinyurl.com/yy83yg4n
Driven to despair
In a hands-on road test, an English couple
who own an electric Porsche Taycan
sports car (a snip at £83,000 or $107,000)
reportedly embarked on a 130-mile journey home in their battery electric vehicle,
hoping to stop for a top-up charge somewhere along the way. In the event, the
journey took nine hours – an average of
14 mph – as they struggled to find any
suitable charging points or even one
that actually worked. Eventually, they
found a working, available fast charger
and limped home with 11% capacity
to spare. Next day, they located three
charging points in town but none of
them was working either.
The availability of electric vehicle
charging points in Britain is fairly dire,
but with petrol and diesel cars falling
out of favour with environmentalists and
the government, fossil-fuelled cars will
probably be taxed off the road or petrol
pumps themselves will become scarce,
overtaken by EV charging points instead.
It will become the norm to drive to a supermarket and recharge for free while
popping inside to shop. At the moment,
poor chargepoint availability (less than
20,000 across the UK) is a major obstacle
towards adopting electric vehicles (cost is
another), and the UK Government’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)
has launched a market study into the
EV charging market, to make sure this
new and fast-growing sector works well
for UK drivers, they say. The National
Grid reckons there could be between 2.7
and 10.6 million EVs on Britain’s roads
by 2030, and could reach 36 million by
the year 2040. Today there are about 38
million cars on Britain’s roads, says the
RAC (Royal Automobile Club).
Britain’s first all-electric EV charging
station has now opened in Braintree,
Essex which operator Gridserve claims
to be the world’s first ‘Electric Forecourt’.
It charges up to 36 cars at a time at a cost
of 24p (0.32¢) per kWh, with AC and DC
chargers ranging from 22kW to 350kW.
Services for buses and trucks will also be
offered. More information is at: https://
gridserve.com/braintree-overview/. One
hopes that electric forecourts work better
than their website: the newsroom and
press office web pages had blown a fuse
and were 404 when checked.
Other news
France has pressed ahead with a 3%
Digital Sales Tax (DST) after a temporary stay since announcing it last year.
The tax, aimed at major digital operators
including Facebook, Amazon, Google
and eBay, is levied on sales of ‘soft’
digital services such
as search engine advertising and online
marketplace fees.
Until an internationally agreed tax model
arrives, several countries are targeting
these primarily US
digital services to
bolster falling tax
revenues. The UK
imposed its own
2% DST last April
(eBay is swallowing the cost, while
Amazon is passing
Britain’s first all-electric EV charging station in Essex which
it on to traders). In
Gridserve claims to be the world’s first ‘Electric Forecourt’.
14
Britain, Facebook UK’s last filed accounts
showed a gross turnover of £1.6 billion,
a net operating profit of £96 million and
a £28 million tax bill. Last year America’s US Trade Representative (USTR)
policy body started an investigation of
its own, citing the supposedly negative
and unfair impact that DSTs may have
on these American tech giants.
In Europe, Nokia, Ericsson and others
have embarked on a joint project called
Hexa-X to research the next level of 6G
mobile connectivity (see https://hexa-x.
eu/). Meantime Finland has joined the list
of countries, including Australia, banning
China’s Huawei and ZTE from its 5G infrastructure. The UK has also changed
its mind and is removing Huawei hardware from its networks, a task that will
take seven years to accomplish. After
trying to keep Huawei’s 5G network
security ‘manageable’, the UK National
Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) had deep
concerns about Huawei’s future system
integrity since US component and chip
manufacturing sanctions had impacted
on supply chains. Meantime, despite the
apparent trade ban, Google apps on UK
Huawei phones continue to be updated, for now anyway, but future Huawei
phones are destined to use their Harmony OS rather than Google’s Android. The
author’s phone is backing up to a wellrun Huawei Cloud as usual, with 50GB
storage costing about £8 a year.
Several Chinese-made video doorbells have been taken off sale after UK
consumer body Which? discovered they
could be easily hacked, or they sent unencrypted usernames or passwords data
back to China. All eleven doorbells posed
risks, says Which?, who criticised the
Victure brand in particular. More details
at https://tinyurl.com/y3fztu7z
Micro-satellite maker Swarm (www.
swarm.space) has launched 24 more
¼U-sized SpaceBEE satellites (Net Work,
October 2020) as part of its low-cost
network aimed purely at serving IoT
devices. Part government-owned satellite network OneWeb (www.oneweb.
world) which had been posited as Britain’s post-Brexit satnav replacement for
the EU Galileo GPS system, has emerged
from bankruptcy and is set to resume satellite launches. OneWeb aims to lob more
than 600 of them into low-earth orbit.
The UK government will likely bid adieu
to GPS and Galileo as, moving forward,
the UK’s Space-Based Positioning Navigation and Timing Programme (SBPP)
is exploring alternatives for building a
home-grown satnav and timing network
instead of relying on foreign sources.
See you next month for more Net Work!
The author can be reached at:
alan<at>epemag.net
Practical Electronics | February | 2021
